


Far From Here

by Endemic



Category: The Walking Dead (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Anxiety Disorder, Asexual Character, Borderline Personality Disorder, Canon-Typical Violence, Canon-Typical subject matter, F/F, Families of Choice, Femslash, M/M, Mental Health Issues, POV Multiple, Plot, Rated For Violence, Romance, Slash, Slow Build, fuck telltale, makeshift family, some sexual situations, time skip, twdg - Freeform, twdgs2
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-08
Updated: 2014-08-24
Packaged: 2018-02-12 09:26:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2104419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Endemic/pseuds/Endemic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sarah survives the deck collapse, and she doesn't see the girl with the hat again for seven years.     [ Sarah/Clementine - Canon Divergent - Rated for Violence]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Girl with the Hat

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is largely canon-compliant (up to Amid the Ruins), apart from altering canon events to allow many dead characters to be alive.
> 
>  **IMPORTANT** :  
> Many characters depicted here are very minor characters, for your convenience I will provide wiki links below:  
> [Fivel](http://walkingdead.wikia.com/wiki/Fivel) * [Danielle](http://walkingdead.wikia.com/wiki/Danielle_\(Video_Game\)) * [Michelle](http://walkingdead.wikia.com/wiki/Michelle_\(Video_Game\)) * [Jamie](http://walkingdead.wikia.com/wiki/Jaime)
> 
> (This also goes to show how many dead characters I have/plan on bringing back, fair warning.)
> 
>  **PAIRINGS** :  
> Will include many side f/f and m/m pairings, but this is ultimately a Sarah/Clem fic. Everything else is background.

They make a mistake, choosing Becca. Even Sarah knows this.

Sarah, who involuntarily kept her distance from Becca after several failed attempts at a play-date back in Carver's camp (Becca had hated that word— _play-date_ ). Sarah, who hasn't seen Becca in seven years. Still, she knows that Becca is the last person the bandits should have chosen to drag from the camp in the wee morning hours.

But they do choose Becca, not the three people Sarah has never seen before, not... the girl with the hat.

In the half-light, Sarah watches the scuffle from her vantage point in a tree, where she has been watching all night.

She didn't expect this. Her body seizes up and her fingers feel cold against the branch beneath her. She can't get involved. If she has to... she can handle herself. She has handled herself before. Her friends... her _family_ have made sure of that. But she doesn't have to engage with the scene unfolding before her, with the camp of people that are only strangers and memories. She doesn't have to, so she doesn't.

Becca is grabbed from behind, a hand clamping tight over her mouth. The mousey boy on watch with Becca is fast asleep, and stays that way as his companion is pulled away from the camp, disappearing into the trees. The bandits are male in stature, their faces covered in ski masks reminiscent of criminals in the time before the dead walked.

It isn't too odd these days, for bandits to make efforts to protect their identity. Those who can survive nine years in a living nightmare are good at what they do—crossing the wrong people is a death sentence, or at the very least a ban from joining safe encampments. Especially since most people don't travel much anymore—nowhere is safe enough to justify the risk of long-term travel.

Those who cross the living are always recognized eventually. Sarah knows this too well.

It is impossible to avoid the wrath of the living. For some, it's hard not to indulge in that wrath. For Sarah, it's hard to shake the fear of what others have done before, what they might do again.

Forgiveness is a difficult thing to give, and an even harder thing to conjure.

Faces that aren't rotting are rare, and Sarah never forgets a face. (Her salvaged, recycled prescription glasses help her in this task. They were procured from a living dead person who, out of the dozens they'd checked, happened to be just as visually challenged as Sarah. She missed the days of eye doctors and _better one or better two._ )

Sarah especially did not forget the face of the sleeping girl in the camp far below her, who hasn't woken despite the kidnapping of her companion by two bandits who look more like comic book bank robbers than the cannibals they probably are. The girl is obscured by a thin layer of tent now, but Sarah saw her enter last night. Saw her face by the firelight when it was her turn to keep watch. Sarah had spent the whole night in the tree just to watch the girl for a little longer.

That's what she keeps telling herself: just a little longer.

The girl still wears that baseball cap, even though it is much more war-torn than Sarah remembers it. Seven years. The girl has kept that thing safe for seven years. Sarah wants nothing more than to smack it off of her kinky hair.

The chirping birds remind her that she has been away for too long, spying on _her_ , and Becca, and their companions.

Sarah's group has been waiting for her to return since before dark last night, and though at least one of them is probably worried sick, Sarah knows that he'll be happy to know Becca is safe.

Well, sort of safe.

Will be safe, eventually.

Sarah believes in Becca.

She wants her to be safe, despite recognizing in hindsight that Becca had bullied her back in Carver's camp.

Becca had seemed so much older back then...

And even though the right thing to do is shimmy down from her hiding spot in the tree and wake the camp of mostly strangers to inform them of Becca's kidnapping, Sarah can't bring herself to move.

She can't because it's... It's okay to watch Clementine. Sarah can handle that. But the thought of speaking to her makes Sarah's chest clench and her heart race. The girl with the hat had saved Sarah, cared for Sarah like her father had cared. But Clementine had also stood safe on a deck and did nothing but order someone else to help when Sarah was in danger. Why? Why had she done that when she had taken the job on herself the first time in the mobile home? She had talked Sarah out of suicide only to abandon her when she was begging for help. Even though Sarah pleaded for her life, the other girl could not be bothered to help her again. She sent someone else to help. Someone who didn't want to. Someone who hadn't even helped their own sister.

Sarah had overstayed her welcome back then, and Clementine had stood safely on the deck and watched her die.

But Sarah is not dead.

She had struggled her way under the rubble, curled into a tiny ball, and stayed as quiet as her dad had told her to be so many times before, until more of the deck crashed down on top of her, protecting her further in her little cubby-hole. She pushed her way out when the screams of Rebecca's labor were sure to draw the dead people elsewhere.

She is alive.

But it is better if the people that left her to die still believed her to be dead. It was her reason for leaving them back then, for wandering off in the woods, clutching her sore arms, to find her dad, who never would have abandoned her like the girl with the hat or the people they had called friends.

Her dad would not have stood in safety and entrusted her life to a stranger. He would have done everything in his power to keep her alive.

She did not die.

And she did not forget.

 

* * *

 

The scream that bounces through the trees is more a battle cry than a call for help. They go to help anyway, possessions not meant for violence left forgotten in the camp.

Michelle takes to the trees like something from a nature program that Clementine's father used to watch. Danielle is right at Michelle's heels, but Fivel, Fivel looks torn. He seldom leaves Danielle's side, but he also knows that Clementine will be hindered slightly by the overgrown forest floor. He opts for staying behind with her, though the level of anxiety on his face makes Clementine wish he would just go on ahead.

"Just go, the others might need you," she says.

Fivel tosses her a skeptical look. "Doubtful."

The statement is a mix of confidence in his friends and a bit of self-depreciation, but it is true, as most things Fivel says are. He can be a bit cynical at times, but he is usually right.

They move in silence, because there is nothing to say. Becca wouldn't hesitate to chastise anyone who broke the rules and left camp without notice, no matter what their reason might be. It is unlikely that she ended up out in the woods voluntarily. Which pointed to bandits. Bandits only have so many reasons to steal live humans instead of food or supplies. None of those reasons are good news.

Clementine is much taller than she was half a year ago, which is a godsend for climbing fences or reaching things she couldn't before, and for giving better piggy back rides to Alvin, but is bad for her balance. Her left leg—the one in need of an upgrade—keeps catching on the underbrush. Finding a prosthetic that accommodated her new height would require an extensive trip into the city that Kenny has forbid her from taking.

Still, she moves quickly enough that they find the others before Michelle is finished tying the bandits up.

Becca's lip is split, but she looks no worse for wear. Just to be sure, Clementine attempts to inconspicuously circle the other girl, checking for wounds.

She fails, because Becca spots her, rolls her eyes, throws her hands up in exasperation and spins around once to show she is unharmed.

"Happy, mom?" Becca spits in Clementine's direction. She doesn't like being babied, not even by Michelle, but especially not by Clementine.

Clementine shrugs. She hasn't felt relief in a companion's survival in a long time. Feelings like surprise, or worry, are things that died with her childhood. She doesn't mourn the loss of such emotions, not really. There is no room for emotions most days; everything has to be treated as a series of something Mike liked to call _If, Then,_ protocols. _If_ Becca is wounded, _then_ Clementine should administer first aid. _If_ Becca is fine, _then_ move on to dealing with the bandits.

Michelle finishes tying the last knots around the men's wrists (she was in girl-scouts back in the day, something Becca constantly teases her for), and Fivel gathers the weapons that were disarmed from the bandits.

"Please! I'm sure they had their reasons!" Danielle says to Michelle, who ignores her.

"Yeah, what the girl said," the barely conscious Bandit #1 agrees. Becca shuts him up by pointing a gun in his direction.

"We're all desperate out here, right?" Danielle says, addressing everyone but the bandits, who can't hide their surprise behind their ski masks.

Clementine hates this part.

The others do too. No one responds to Danielle's pleading, her justifying. But no one stops her either.

Danielle casts a frantic look around the group. "Hey," she says, voice more pleading, giving an unspoken promise to the bandits with the pointed way she spoke. "You had a good reason, right? Tell my friends you had a good reason."

Her voice promises: if you talk, we might spare you.

Tears collect in Danielle's eyelashes. Every time. She cries every single time she does this, pleads for a monster's safety.

"We weren't gonna hurt nobody," Bandit #2 says, much to #1's apprehension. "We're simply the middle men."

Clementine has heard this phrase before, but she doesn't remember what it means.

Danielle doesn't either, apparently, because she shoots a pointed look at Fivel, who usually knows these kinds of things.

"And why exactly are you acting as a middle men dealing in human cargo?" Fivel asks, sounding sure of himself, though Clementine knows he is reluctant to participate. Anything for Danielle.

"Come on man," says Bandit #2. They say _man_ , not _kid_. Fivel, with his lanky body and soft, pointed features, would never be called _man_ by someone who wasn't close to his own age. These bandits are just teenagers. "We don't see the girl as cargo, but you gotta understand, we weren't gonna hurt her or nothin'. We just need her is all."

Clementine bristles at the word choice. Needs. Men have needs. It's a consensus that had apparently existed before society's ruin. A false conclusion that is drawn out of selfishness and the inability of men to accept responsibility for their actions.

She first came across this notion when she was eleven and Luke risked the group to indulge in a woman who he barely knew, rather than making sure his pregnant friend was safe, a dead man's daughter, an eleven year old girl, his friends.

The thought brings her back to a memory of Molly slapping Luke across the face when he tries to justify the same sort of behavior years later.

Clementine shakes the memory away, and rejoins reality in time to realize that the bandits aren't talking about that kind of need.

"There's this encampment a ways over, out in the middle of the boonies. They're real safe, they boast a stockpile of medicine and food the likes of which I believed unheard of." The bandit's voice wavers under Michelle's cold scrutiny. His gaze keeps flitting over to Danielle, who nods in understanding. "Thing is, they've got too many men. They don't accept new groups unless you've got a woman with you."

"I see, I see," Danielle coos, fingers immediately going for the ropes around the bandit's wrists.

Clementine hates this. Her heart bangs against her ribs like the bars of a cage. No emotion, she reminds herself, there is no place for emotion in this world. Not even fear.

Fivel gravitates towards Clementine, he's good like that. She knows it must be his time surviving alone with Danielle as a child that makes him this way. People call Clementine the _Matriarch_ more than they call her Clementine, and while she understands the reasons behind the title, the notoriety, it feels wrong applied to her when Fivel and Bonnie care so much more deeply than she is capable of. They are so much more attuned to the emotions of others, and it makes them twice the survivor, twice the nurturer she could ever be.

Clementine doesn't realize her fingers are trembling until Fivel grabs her hand and squeezes. She allows this, because she knows it's hard for him to watch this too.

Becca and Michelle give Danielle space, they just want this over with.

Danielle draws a knife from her belt and cuts the ropes from the wrists of Bandit #2. "My friends and I are going to release you. But you have to promise you'll make friends with a girl next time instead of forcing her to do anything."

"Y-Yes ma'am!" He practically grovels. "Thank you kindly, miss, thank you--your kindness will not go unappreciated!" He rubs his raw, but free, wrists, as though he's just discovering for the first time that the creatures known as humans have the capacity for mercy.

Danielle smiles, studying the look of relief on both bandit's faces before driving her knife into the man's head in one swift motion.

Bandit #1 screams as Bandit #2's body slumps over onto him, he squirms away from the warmth, the blood of his companion seeping through his shirt. "JEFFERY! My, my brother! You killed my brother!"

Clementine almost feels pity, until the words that come next.

"You fucking bitch!" The only remaining bandit yells. "You—we should have taken you—we should have—"

The bandit is dead before anyone can hear what he should have done.

And that's okay, because they don't need to know.


	2. Trinket

Navigating the treetops is a skill—one Russell had insisted on instilling in Sarah. The hardest part is the initial climb, because the towering pines of Georgia are bare of branches for the first fifteen feet. But Sarah has the tools, and the skill set necessary to travel through the high branches, limb to limb, tree to tree.

But she wishes now that she was not so skilled at moving unseen through the treetops. Wishes she hadn't followed the girl with the hat.

They are a cruel group. So much crueler than Sarah expected them to be. 

They kill the bandits with no remorse. Sarah can accept that the death of living people is sometimes necessary. Sometimes the living are scarier than the living dead. But humans make mistakes, and this group killed the bandits before they could properly decipher mistake from cruelty.

And that girl with the long, recently brushed brown hair. She had tortured them. Played with her kill. She had soaked up their hope and made quick work of their lives.

These aren't good people. They aren't like Russell, who has personally broken so many people of their inclinations to find enjoyment in the killing of the living dead. His convictions are strong, and Sarah loves him for this. She is not the only one. 

Russell is the kindest person Sarah has ever met. She had only known him briefly in Carver's camp, and even then, not really, because her dad didn't like her talking to the others. He was the first person she met after she left the rubble of the collapsed deck. He found her crying and screaming and attracting the attention of too many dead people, hacking away at them uselessly with a discarded axe. He understood when she wouldn't be coaxed away from danger until she found her father. 

And find him they did—pale and rotting and not her father anymore.

"Do you think they were telling the truth, about the encampment?" The mousey boy asks.

"How in the hell should I know?" a girl Sarah doesn't recognize snaps, holstering her weapon and stomping over to Becca, trying to inspect Becca's busted lip with her fingers. Becca bats her hand away.

The jester is familiar, loving. Sarah's anger softens a bit.

The girl with the combed hair says nothing, she shakes the blood from her knife before wiping her tears away on the front of the mousey boy's shirt. Had the tears been fake?

The whole thing is unsettling. Sarah feels sick. She wants to be back home, with the others, she wants to break down where it's safe, where it's accepted. Where she'll receive an exasperated sigh, but open arms and a _oh come on now darling, don't cry,_ from Nathan, or a squeezed hand and wise advice from Russell. Where Ben will regard her anxiously and relate, where Jamie will hold her close and listen. Where Eddie and Wyatt will make exuberant remarks, offended on her behalf. 

It's not her dad's smooth voice chastising her for her tears, demanding she be stronger, but it's enough. And somehow, even though her new family's reactions are kinder, more measured, even though they can calm her down in a way her dad's reluctant scolding never had, she would trade it all in an instant to see her dad again, sentient and angry with her.

“All of our stuff is still at camp, we should head back.”

It's not the first time Sarah's heard Clementine's voice since she's been hiding in the tree, but it still feels like the first. The girl sounds so much older. Back then, the little girl seemed to be so much more mature than her, a goal to reach. 

“Yeah, make sure the supplies are safe. You three go, we'll make sure these guys don't have anything good on them.” Becca nudges one of the bandit's dead bodies with the toe of her boot. 

Without another word, Clementine turns to leave, the mousey boy and the girl who had killed the bandits in tow.

Sarah remains still, the needles of the pines aren't as thick as she needs them to be to follow.

With their companions gone, the older, severe looking girl wraps her arms around Becca's waist.

“Quit it, Michelle,” Becca shoves the girl, Michelle, away. “I'm fine, alright? You don't have to act like I'm some delicate thing. Especially after I _just proved_ how well I can handle myself.”

“Oh I know your sorry ass can handle herself. Don't mean I ain't happy you're alive,” Michelle says, nonplussed by Becca's attitude. 

While gossip is always interesting, Sarah just wants to follow after her old friend. Walking or swinging from tree to tree is not the quietest of ventures, and now that the group below isn't distracted by bandits, Sarah knows the only way to follow after Clementine is to sneak her way down the tree and walk. 

She will definitely be seen if she does this, so instead she shuffles impatiently and waits.

“Well,” Becca says, not really able to argue with that. “You don't have to look so fucking surprised about it.”

Michelle scoffs. “Surprised? Me? No way. Girl, you know me better than that. I'm just surprised you didn't cap those fuckers before I got here.”

“Excuse me? I was in the process of kicking them to death.”

How can they find this amusing? Bad guys or no, those bandits were living people. 

“Yeah right, I know you were saving them for Dani.”

Becca busies herself with rummaging through the bandit's pockets. “So what? Why get my hands dirty when it's practically her job.”

“It's just fucked up, know what I'm saying? Girl needs help. A doctor or something.”

Sarah cringes at that word—doctor. It brings her back to the comforting, sterile halls of hospitals the likes of which will never be seen again. Her dad always did all her check-ups, gave her all her shots, even though he wasn't a pediatrician. He was nice like that, he knew she was afraid of other doctors, and even though she never got over her fear of needles, it helped that he was the one administrating her vaccinations. 

“No she doesn't. Guys like that deserve to die,” Becca says as she rolls one of the dead men in question over to check his back pockets. “Who cares if she likes to feel in control before she puts them down? That's all the therapy she needs. Empowering, if you ask me.” 

“Clem's messed if she thinks it was a good idea to let Dani come with us. Kid was finally starting to get better. Almost thought she would drop the whole revenge kill thing.”

“Yeah, well, let her do what she wants. It's fine with me if she wants to castrate creepy bandits, kill them, or have a fucking tea party with them, I don't give a shit, let her. They basically fucking tried to sell me to some creeps, if what they said was even true.”

“Think it's that encampment over in Savannah? The fuckers that think they going to repopulate the earth?”

Sarah's heard of that camp. They don't force people to join, but they do require female members to bear children. Russell always gets really angry whenever they meet another group who are on their way there. Something about it being wrong to trade safety for pregnancy. Coercion or something. 

What doesn't make sense to Sarah is why people would go there instead of Everett. The safest place in all of Georgia is Everett. It has the highest cinder-block and log walls that nine years in the apocalypse can afford. It's located in the middle of nowhere, at that ski lodge that Sarah and Clementine had once visited as friends. Where Carver had found them.

Back then, that ski lodge had seemed almost fairy-tale in stature—a shining castle that had been waiting for its princess to return from the corpse-littered streets. 

Now, the ski lodge is hardly the most interesting thing about Everett. Sarah has never seen the makeshift city except from afar—the wall around it spanning farther than she could see. All Sarah really knows about Everett is that it houses more people than any encampment she's ever heard of—more people than can fit in that ski lodge. They must have built cabins too, barns to raise animals in.

Sarah doesn't know for sure. What she does know is that it's real, it's safe, and that Clementine lives there, that this group Clementine's with now must live there too. 

Judging by the gossip, Everett doesn't accept new members easily, mostly just mothers and children, and any group that wants access has to go through an admission process that usually ends in rejection.

Sarah and her group didn't ever bother trying to get in. They know who the city is run by and why they would never be accepted there. Well—that isn't true. Some of her group might be accepted in Everett, but not all of them. And with Sarah's family, it is either all or nothing.

Becca shrugs, and they turn to go.

Sarah waits as long as she can—until the two girl's voices can't be heard amongst the trees, before she carefully lowers herself down the tree with her climbing belt. Her backpack of ropes, tree spikes and meager supplies isn't as heavy as usual. The point of being away from home had been hunting, not scrounging for supplies, and she refused to carry any dead rabbits inside her backpack. Nathan took care of that, usually. 

She is back on the ground without much effort, she leaves the tree belt on, just in case she needs to make a quick escape from the dead people. The troves of dead people aren't as thick as they used to be. Nine years meant a lot of discovers as far as walker killing went. 

Every once in a while people who called themselves _exterminators_ would come around, drawing crowds of walkers with loud noises and then setting them all on fire. Walkers aren't as large of a threat as they were a few years ago, but that didn't mean they weren't still around.

Sarah finds herself making her way back to Clementine's camp, rather than where she is meant to meet back up with Russell and the others.

Shoot. What is she doing? The last thing she needs is to think about her ex-friend for one more second. But... Sarah never expected to see Clementine again. She didn't want to see her again. It was bad enough hearing rumors about a teenager named Clementine who helped run Everett. 

But Sarah had stumbled across her accidentally (what was Clementine doing outside of her precious safe-haven, anyway?) and... well, all of the things Sarah had wished she could say to Clementine came rushing back to her. 

_Why did you leave me?_

_If I had been stronger, if I had tried harder, would you have saved me?_

_Did you even like me at all?_

_What's so special about that hat?_

_Do you resent me?_

_Do you remember me?_

_Can we still be friends?_

But Sarah didn't want to be Clementine's friend, not anymore. Not when Clementine had abandoned her. Not when she knew Russell wouldn't return home until he found her. Not when Jamie needed her.

It's best if she goes home and forgets about the girl with the hat.

But instead she had sat in a tree all night and risked her own safety, her group's safety, just to... what? See how Clementine is doing? Sate her own curiosity? 

Tears blur her vision and she wipes them away angrily. Stupid. It's stupid to have missed Clementine for so long. To have thought back to that little girl in the baseball cap any time she needed to conjure strength she didn't have. To have used Clementine's memory to make herself stronger. 

It's stupid to finally be able to survive on her own, but still feel like a girl she had only known for short while was responsible for the change. Clementine was Sarah's role model all these years—nothing more than a memory, a legend in her mind. The girl with the hatchet, the girl with the hat, the girl who cared. The girl who she hadn't seen for seven years. The girl who probably didn't even remember a girl named Sarah who couldn't fend for herself.

“What the fuck—“

Sarah's head snaps towards the voice. Shoot. 

Shoot, shoot, shoot.

“The hell are you doing out here, kid?”

Shoot.

Sarah wasn't paying attention, and she had walked right by Becca and Michelle, who still hadn't made it back to their camp. They had been ahead of her—why had she caught up to them?

Becca adjusts her shirt, looking flustered. 

Oh. 

Sarah has seen this before. The startled looks, the flushed faces, the quick shuffling to move away from each other. She had interrupted something.

It would be amusing, if it wasn't for the looks of fury on their faces.

Sarah turns towards them fully, wasting no time throwing her weaponless hands into the air to show her compliance.

_It'll be okay. They're just shaken up because of the bandits. They won't hurt me._

“The hell you doing out here alone?” Michelle asks. She looks even more severe up close, expression hard and unforgiving.

A cold sweat rushes over Sarah's skin. “I—I—“ What is Sarah doing out in the woods alone? There is no way she can tell them that she was spying on them.

“She sure sounds guilty to me,” Becca says, no longer looking embarrassed about being caught kissing her companion against a tree.

How come Becca didn't recognize her? “B-Becca, it's me, Sarah, I—“

Michelle shoots Becca an appraising look, but Becca just sneers. 

“Sarah? I don't know any Sarah,” Becca says, incredulous. “How the fuck do you know my name?”

“Must have been watching us for a while, damn creepy if you ask me,” Michelle says, advancing on Sarah.

Everything in Sarah tells her to run—run and run until she is safe inside her family's protection. She doesn't, though. She can't, her knees were too weak.

“I'm sorry!” she says, though she knows it's the wrong thing to say. There has to be something she can say to make Becca remember her, but she can't think, she can't breathe. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.”

“The fuck is wrong with you?” Michelle asks, and then seems to realize the question is pointless. “Never mind, just give me your bag.”

At that, Becca frowns. “We're not supposed to steal—”

“I ain't gonna steal,” Michelle snaps. “I'm just gonna make sure she's not dangerous.”

Okay. Okay. Sarah could do this. She could hand her bag over and everything will be okay. These girls lived in Everett. They didn't need to steal. They said they wouldn't steal. 

Sarah fumbles with the straps and buckles of her backpack, shrugging the thing off and dropping it at her feet. 

Michelle snatches the bag up, tearing open the zipper. “What in the world...?” Michelle pulls the tree spikes out of the bag and looks at them like they're an alien relic. 

“T-Tree spikes, for cl-cl-cl—“ Calm down. She needs to calm down. “I'm sorry, I—”

Michelle stares for a moment longer before dropping the tree spikes on the ground, and systematically pulling out supplies from her bag. Bandages, medicine, ointment. 

“No weapons?” Becca asks, baffled.

“I—I don't like killing them,” Sarah says. “Someone else usually kills them, no—not me.”

Becca's guard goes back up. “Oh yeah? Where are they?”

“Not here!” Of course anyone would say that.“I, I was supposed to meet back up with my group last night, but I got lost. I spent the night in a tree.”

Her anxiety colors the truth of her words, making the two girls glare at her in suspicion. 

“I swear I—“

“Shut up,” Michelle snaps, going back to the bag.

No. Sarah doesn't want this. “There's nothing in there, there's nothing that you would want—why are you doing this? Please stop.” Her words grow more frantic as Michelle nears the bottom of the bag.

Ignoring her pleas, Michelle flips the bag over and empties the last contents of it onto the forest floor. 

Out of the bag falls the neatly folded plaid shirt that belonged to Sarah's dad.

“There isn't even anything good in here,” Michelle says, kicking the pile of stuff.

Sarah screams.

Becca's gun is out of its holster in an instant.


	3. Will do

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who is giving this fic a chance. Please comment to let me know what you think.

Hearing two screams coming from the woods in one day is not how Clementine wanted to spend her morning. The scream is blood-curdling, and Clementine's heart drops when she hears it. It is nothing like Becca's roar of a scream from earlier, the sound of someone holding their own. This scream is one of pure terror, the kind that comes with tears and open wounds.

“Becca?” Danielle asks, immediately alert.

“Didn't sound like her,” Fivel says, though it doesn't make anyone feel better.

Clementine draws her gun and takes off towards the sound. “Wasn't Michelle, either.” 

“Has to involve them though, right?” Danielle matches Clementine's stride this time, and that weighs heavily on Clementine's mind. When Becca had screamed, Danielle was running towards a fight. This time, she's more cautious, waiting to walk right into a nightmare. Nightmares are better with friends at your side.

Fivel's knuckles are white on the handle of his crossbow. “If it didn't involve them to begin with, it will now.”

He's right. Most people aren't as afraid of confrontation as they used to be. It's medicine for the conscience, to help in a situation that doesn't involve you, rather than to avoid it and never know what lives might have been saved by your intervention. _What ifs_ are the biggest threat to the mind's health. So most people, good people, try to help, even though it's safer to get as far away from conflict as possible.

This is especially true for stubborn girls like Becca and Michelle, who have cockiness by the truckload. If there is trouble nearby, they throw themselves into it head first.

Clementine doesn't bother verbally preparing Danielle and Fivel for what situation may lie ahead. They have been at this for too long, they know all of the protocols for even the most unlikely of circumstance—and there is no way they will make a decision that Clementine doesn't approve of, even in the most tense of events.

The initial scream had been loud enough to hear from a good distance away, but they don't start to hear more until they draw closer, where the scream has dwindled down to loud sobbing and a voice so high with grief that Clementine can't make out the words. 

The trees are so thick that Clementine can't spot any figures in the distance, but the sound of sobbing grows louder until there is a shriek and the unmistakable rustle of footfalls running towards her.

Shouts—definitely Michelle's voice—echo from not too far away, but all Clementine can see is the blur of a human body rushing towards her.

Not a walker—they don't move that fast.

Not Becca, not Michelle. 

Who?

The taller person slams right into her, and Clementine is knocked to the ground with the force of it. Judging by the stranger's squawk of surprise, they did not expect to collide with her. Something else must be on their mind. 

The person may be taller, but they are lanky enough that Clementine easily shoves them away. The stranger—a girl with glasses and dark, crudely braided hair, scrambles away, until her wide eyes meet Clementine's and she freezes in fear.

Fear? Why?

Clementine is too distracted for a moment, scanning the girl's hands for weapons, her belt, the forest floor around her. Nothing. Her hands are just full of a crumpled shirt that looks much too large for the girl. 

And then, and then Clementine assesses the girl's face—her bushy eyebrows and scared eyes—and Clementine is eleven years old again, locking pinkie fingers with a girl too many years her senior to be looking at her with such admiration.

Sarah. The girl looks just like Sarah.

But the girl's face doesn't have the sickly sheen of dead flesh. This is not a walker, it's a live person.

It can't be Sarah.

Sarah is dead.

Sarah has been dead for a long time.

The girl is staring back, hyperventilating and clutching the fabric in her hands so hard that Clementine expects it to shred. 

At some point, Clementine registers Becca and Michelle's arrival from the direction the girl came. They stop behind the girl, weapons holstered, looking more worried than threatened. 

They've already determined that this girl isn't a threat. 

“Dani, Fiv, put your guns away,” Becca orders, “She's not dangerous, just crazy.”

Oh. Danielle and Fivel must've had their weapons pointed in the girl's direction ever since she'd slammed into Clementine. She should have known, she should have signaled them to put them away... but she couldn't stop staring at the girl. 

“Clementine?” Fivel asks. Of course it would be him. “Are you alright?”

Was she?

No. Probably not.

She feels her own reeling emotions mirrored in the face of the girl sprawled on the ground across from her—the shock, the frantic breathing, the loss of words, the need to be grounded again. She knows she is not showing the emotions as plainly as the other girl, but her friends still see something wrong in her lack of action.

The others are waiting for her to take care of the situation. She needs to get it together. Clementine tears her eyes away from not-Sarah, squeezing them shut and taking a deep breath.

When she opens her eyes, she gets to her feet, brushes the dirt from her jeans (any distraction to allow her another moment to breathe), and then locks eyes with the girl again, this time unafraid of ghosts.

“Hello,” Clementine says, because people tend to like pleasantries in a world that is all harsh demands. “Are you hurt?”

The girl cringes as if she has just been slapped across the face.

Clementine shakes the memory of watching Sarah get struck across the face by her dad, the memory of having to slap Sarah herself to get her out of that mobile home alive.

“We're not going to hurt you,” Clementine hates the way her voice hardens. But this is business. Just business. “I'm sorry if my friends frightened you.”

At that, the girl's sobs start back up, and Clementine shoots a reprimanding look in Becca and Michelle's direction.

What had they done to her?

Michelle shrugs and waves her hands around in a _hell if I know what's going on_ sort of way.

“We didn't do _anything_ to her, she just—”

Clementine cuts Becca off with a look.

The crying girl is only looking at Clementine, not the others. For someone so skittish, she doesn't seem to be concerned about the rest of her surroundings.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” Clementine tries again, this time crouching in front of the girl. 

Not-Sarah immediately squeals and scrambles backwards before finally tearing her gaze away from Clementine to bury her wet face in the shirt she's been cradling.

How has someone like this survived for so long?

The girl rocks back and forth, sobbing into the cloth, which is...

It is orange. Plaid. Long sleeved. Button down. The kind the cabin doctor wore. Sarah's dad. 

If it wasn't for the girl's uncanny resemblance to Sarah, there is no way such a shirt would bring back seven year old memories of a doctor that refused to help her with a dog bite.

It's all too surreal—the girl's familiar features, her not-meant-for-this-world demeanor, the cabin doctor's shirt. 

Clementine's hand reaches out on its own accord, wanting to grab the girl's face and pry it from the cloth, force the girl to look at her and search until she finds something in the other girl's features that proves that this isn't Sarah. That Sarah is dead.

When her fingers brush a quivering shoulder, the girl's body reacts like a bear trap: her head snaps up, eyes wild, and her arms flail at Clementine, smacking her in the face and shoving her away. Clementine couldn't care less about the violence, she only shuffles closer through the onslaught, eyes locked on the girl's face.

There is nothing about this girl that isn't Sarah.

Not a single thing.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” 

Becca's incredulous question—more of a demand, really—sent a bolt of red through Clementine’s vision.

Jane was wrong, all those years ago. People like Sarah, people like this girl now, did not deserve to be given up on. It was not doing them justice, a favor, to allow them death. Though Clementine had taken years after Sarah's death to realize that. It had been wrong of Jane, to oppose such a grim world view on an eleven year old. In hindsight, Clementine knew that.

“ _Nothing_ ,” Clementine says, cold enough to penetrate Becca's anger. Becca frowns, clearly hurt by Clementine's intensity. Good. “ _Nothing is wrong with her._ ”

It happens all at once—the wreck of a girl seems to focus, really focus, on Clementine for the first time—and Clementine, she reaches out to hug the stranger. 

The stranger allows the hug, something that proved that this girl wasn't Sarah. Sarah had flinched away when Clementine tried to hug her, back then.

“ _Clementine,_ ” the girl whines, going still in her arms, though her fingers dig hard into the leather of Clementine's jacket. 

Hearing her name fall from the girl's lips is shocking, even though Clementine had allowed herself to believe, if only for a moment, that Sarah was alive and in her arms. 

Clementine can feel the tears welling up—the disbelief building in her tear ducts—threatening to spill from her face like blood from a wound.

There is no way. It is impossible, but the question claws its way out of her throat before she can swallow it. “ _Sarah?_ ”

Sobs shake out of the girl harder than ever now, and for a moment Clementine thinks about how to apologize for mistaking this stranger for a ghost. She's so stupid. She is being so stupid, to think that this could possibly be Sarah, alive and well. 

“ _You remember me,_ ” the girl manages to choke out.

It isn't a question.

Through the distress and the sadness and the tears, Clementine can make out the heartbreaking _relief_ in the other girl's voice. 

It really is Sarah.

And she's surprised Clementine remembers her. She didn't think Clementine would remember her. 

She doesn't think she is anything to Clementine. 

Clementine hugs the girl tighter—hard enough to hurt—but it doesn't matter, Sarah is alive, and Sarah is here, and Sarah could bear to withstand the crushing weight of Clementine's disbelief for a little while longer.

Sarah. Sarah. Sarah.

This is Sarah.

The girl— _Sarah, Sarah, Sarah_ —buries her face against Clementine's neck, her sobs finally dying down the a low keens. 

“ _How?_ ” Clementine asks, somehow not minding the wetness of Sarah's grief on her neck. “Sarah— _How?_ ”

Sarah's preparation to speak is marked by several attempts at syllables overtaken by sharp, shuddering breaths. 

“It's okay, it's okay,” Clementine says, feeling all too much like she's cradling a six-month-old Alvin in her arms again. She loosens her arms and Sarah makes a squeak of protest, pushing herself harder against Clementine, smearing more hot tears against Clementine's skin. “You don't have to speak right now, I can wait, I just—I thought that—“

_You were dead._

It is not the time nor the place to make excuses. To try and shed her guilt of _not knowing_ like a snake's second skin. It wasn't fair to Sarah to tell her how much she _thought she was dead_ or to tell her that she wouldn't have rested until she found her if she thought for an _instant_ that Sarah had survived that deck collapse. 

If Clementine had known. If she had known...

“I crawled under the rubble.” Sarah's voice is higher than usual with stress, but now that Clementine knows, the voice is unmistakably Sarah's. “Into like, a little cubby-hole. Like a bunny.”

The comparison is both absurd and accurate—Sarah did react like a scared rabbit whenever danger arrived. She could freeze up, she could run, she could hide, but nothing else. Never anything else. 

Except... could that be true anymore? Seven years is a long time to go without learning to fight. Then again, everyone in this world has to fight, even if they somehow manage to avoid doing it physically.

Clementine would kill to see Sarah toting a gun and carving a path— _a life_ for herself. Just thinking about it makes her smile. Sarah isn't the only person Clementine has ever taught how to use a gun, but she was the first.

The next question, of course, is _why._

_Why didn't you tell us you were alive?_

_Why didn't you tell me you were alive?_

_Why didn't you come back to us?_

_Why did you leave?_

_Where did you go?_

_Where have you been?_

_Are you alone?_

_Who are you with?_

_Why did you leave?_

_Why did you leave?_

_Is it my fault?_

The myriad of questions is cruel, selfish, and most of them Clementine can guess the answer to. 

Clementine was only eleven years old at the time of Sarah's not-death. But Sarah... Sarah had thought the world of Clementine. Even at eleven, Clementine could tell that Sarah looked up to her. Clementine was only eleven. Only a little girl. She could not have slid down the collapsed deck and pulled Sarah to safety. 

Maybe Jane could have, if her heart had been in it. Maybe Bonnie and Mike and Luke and Kenny, if they cared enough to work together, to take the risk. Maybe Nick, if he had been there. Nick would have. Nick definitely would have tried. Nick probably could have done it, too. 

But not Clementine. Not a little girl.

But Clementine was not a little girl to Sarah, not back then. 

There was no doubt in Clementine's mind that Sarah blamed her for not trying. 

If Clementine had been in Sarah's place, she would have blamed any of her _protectors_ for not even trying to save her. Lee would have died trying to pull Clementine from a seemingly hopeless situation. Clementine knows this with all her heart. He could have left her hundreds of times, could have avoided so much risk involved with toting a child around. But he would have never abandoned her, even if saving her would have been suicidal. 

Back then, with Sarah's dad gone, Clementine was the closest thing to a _Lee_ that Sarah had. 

So Clementine swallows her questions, her urge to know for sure that Sarah feels betrayed by an eleven-year-old-girl that couldn't save her. Instead, she stays quiet, letting Sarah's sobs die and her breathing even out.

When Clementine pulls away, Sarah lets her, reluctantly. The girl's fingers are still latched onto Clementine's jacket, the shirt—Carlos' shirt—lying forgotten in her lap.

“Clementine?” Sarah's voice is clearer now, more reminiscent of the whispered words they'd shared that first night in the cabin—where Clementine had convinced Sarah to smuggle supplies for her arm. “Can I ask you something?”

Here it comes.

The _why didn't you save me?_ The _why didn't you try?_ The _didn't you care about me?_ The _why did you abandon me?_

Clementine steels herself, bracing for the onslaught of questions she isn't prepared to answer.

“Can we still be friends?”

Clementine stares.

“I—I know it's been a long time, and I know you're, like, a—“

Clementine reaches up and cups Sarah's face, brushing her thumb across the girl's cheek, wiping the tears and grime away. The gesture is instinct, probably a result of caring for baby Alvin for so many years. She smooths back the loose strands of Sarah's thick hair, the strands that are glued to her face by the tears. 

“Yes,” Clementine says, firm, looking Sarah right in the eye. “I...” Here, she falters, because she wants to say _I have never stopped being your friend, never stopped thinking of you as a friend,_ but she knows that's not fair to say. To Sarah, Clementine—Sarah's _Lee_ —had left her to die. It isn't fair to tell the girl that they had never stopped being friends when to Sarah, they had. They clearly had, or else she wouldn't be asking to rekindle the friendship.

Sarah looks at her, anxiety riddled, hanging on Clementine's answer.

“I can't remember ever wanting to be someone's friend as much as I do right now,” Clementine says. It's not enough, not what she really wants to say, but it will do.


	4. Better

When Clementine finally helps Sarah to her feet, Sarah jumps at the sight of Clementine's companions. She had forgotten they were there. 

It brings Sarah back to an hour ago when one of them had drove her knife through a bad man's—but perhaps not an evil man's—head. Clementine had just allowed it to happen.

Sarah feels sick.

Russell almost never resorted to the death of living people. But then again, she and Jamie and Ben had managed to avoid getting kidnapped so far. Maybe that's where people drew the line.

Did her family think she had been kidnapped now? Because she hadn't returned to the rendezvous point last night?

“Sarah, these are my...” Clementine hesitates before deciding on, “Friends. These are my friends.”

“Hello,” Sarah replies, too fast. Her body feels stiff, arms rigid at her side. “My name is Sarah.” She tries to keep her head up, but her eyes are locked on the ground. “I knew Clementine... _before._ ”

She doesn't know why she adds that last part, and the frown on Clementine's face makes her wish she hadn't.

“We gathered as much,” the mousey boy says, not unkind.

Clementine gestures at the boy. “That's Fivel.”

He smiles. “Pleased to meet you.”

“Yeah, y-you too.” She usually doesn't have this much issue with meeting new people. Still, her voice   
shakes. Is it because of what they did to the bandits? Is she just afraid to disappoint Clementine's much more capable friends?

“Danielle,” Clementine says, gesturing to the girl next to Fivel. The one who had killed the bandits. 

Danielle steps forward with an outstretched hand. 

Sarah almost cringes away, but somehow manages to realize that the girl just wants to shake her hand. Sarah complies, and Danielle grips her hand gentler than expected, gentler than she must have gripped the handle of her knife an hour ago. 

“Michelle,” Clementine continues, and the girl that had emptied Sarah's bag onto the ground waves dismissively in acknowledgment. “And Becca.”

“We've met,” Becca says, like she's spitting out a mouthful of expired food.

Michelle raises an eyebrow at her.

“In carver's camp,” Becca says. “She was a doctor's daughter. I remember now.”

Sarah thinks that it's kind of Becca, to label her as the doctor's daughter and not _the baby_ or _the idiot that was too old to be asking the other kids to play._ It must be out of respect to Clementine. 

Michelle nods in understanding, though the expression on her face says she'll be asking Becca questions later. 

Carver's camp. Everyone seems to know what that means when Becca says it. They must all know about it, even though it's not their memory, their past. Sarah feels odd, almost jealous. She herself has friends that know her history—everything she had been through, even the bad stuff _before_ dead people could walk—but it made her feel uneasy somehow, knowing that Clementine had such close friends too.

What did someone like Sarah have to offer Clementine, when the girl had so many capable friends?

Sarah shouldn't be here.

She should have never stayed up all night in that tree.

She should be back with her family, where she belongs.

Where she is safe.

“I saw what happened, with the bandits,” the words come before she can stop them. “You guys killed them.”

Clementine just studies Sarah's suddenly petulant demeanor. The girl has to tilt her head up to meet Sarah's eyes, but she somehow still looks authoritative doing it. 

“So?” Becca asks. “They tried to kidnap me.”

That deserved to go punished, or at least scrutinized, sure, but murder? “I get that, but which is worse—kidnapping or murder?”

“Kidnapping,” Danielle and Fivel say in unison. Of course Danielle would say that, after having murdered the bandits.

Clementine is silent.

“Girl, what world you been living in?” Michelle asks, incredulous, rhetorical. 

It isn't the first time Sarah's perception of reality has been called into question.

“They're both bad, you don't have to resort to murder—I mean, everyone makes mistakes,” Sarah says, feeling like a much less convincing version of Russell. A much weaker one. “Why not just leave them and go back to your city, to Everett? It's not like those bandits could hurt you there. They were just two guys.”

Clementine reacts for the first time, eyes going wide, searching Sarah's face in disbelief.

Uh-oh.

Sarah just admitted that she knew where they lived, in Everett. Where Clementine lived.

The question is written clearly on Clementine's face, expressed with a mixture of shock and hurt: _If you knew where I lived, that I was still alive too, why didn't you come find me sooner?_

It's an answer that Clementine probably doesn't want to hear. One that Sarah doesn't want to say.

“And what then? They stay out here and find some other girl to kidnap?” Danielle asks, calm anger seeping into her voice. It is much more frightening than Becca's brash, snappy words.

“Maybe they would've found a girl that's alone,” Michelle adds. “A girl that don't got no friends to protect her.”

Sarah knew Michelle meant her. She knew it wasn't a threat, not really, just a tactic to belittle Sarah's opinions, but it felt like one.

Anger burns hot inside of her, the kind that makes her want to move, to take action—the kind she never knows what to do with. 

“Is—“ Sarah has to take several hard breaths to keep from screaming. “Is this the kind of company you keep, now?” She glares right at Clementine.

Clementine holds Sarah's gaze, not so much as a blink out of place on her stony expression. 

Shoot. 

Sarah is messing up. She's messing up—but, she needs to hold her ground about this. She needs to make Clementine acknowledge that what they did was wrong.

Sarah waits—and so do Clementine's companions, even though Sarah knows it must be killing Becca to hold her tongue. 

They're all waiting for Clementine to say _something_. 

When she finally does, Sarah's heart drops.

“ _Do not,_ ” Clementine says, so firm, so full of authority, that Sarah's anger instantly drains and all she is left with is the urge to run away. “ _Insult my friends._ ”

Sarah feels like crying. She fights the urge with every ounce of strength she has.

It's the same sort of importance, authority, that the eleven-year-old Clementine had held herself with, but Clementine is not a little girl anymore. She may still be shorter than Sarah, but her demeanor is confident, dangerous. A force to be reckoned with.

“You may question them and their values,” Clementine continues. Sarah can't bear to look at her. “But _do not_ insult them.”

Sarah feels fifteen years old again, under her dad's scrutiny. “I—I didn't mean—“ 

“You did,” Clementine cuts her off. “You did mean to insult them.”

Sarah flounders, having trouble breathing again. Her throat is too tight, like the air can't fit.

“It's okay, as you said before, everyone makes mistakes.” Clementine's words hold no mercy, though they are certainly merciful. “As for everyone else, that goes for you too. Sarah is a dear friend,” Sarah wonders how Clementine can say this, after all of her harshness. “If I hear one more negative word about her—one more dirty look in her direction, _Becca_ —you'll be reassigned to the stables for a month.”

Clementine's _friends_ are silent, and when Sarah chances a glance around them, Becca looks more upset than bitter, like she might actually burst into tears.

_What in the world...?_

Who was she? Just _who_ was Clementine to these people? The girl had called them _friends_ , but... friends don't threaten each other with chores.

Was she their leader? That made sense—Clementine must be in charge of the small group for the time being, while they're away from their city. 

“What are you guys doing out here, anyway?” Sarah asks, cutting through the thick silence, her own anxiety over the situation quickly diminishing under her curiosity. “In the woods, I mean. I thought people in Everett had everything they need. That they don't have to scavenge for supplies or hunt or—“

“It's important not to live in a box,” Clementine says, and it reminds Sarah of the way Clementine had told her that a gun was _just a thing_ , back when they were kids. It sounded like borrowed advice, words she has been holding tightly for a long time. “We send scouts to make periodic trips to various cities in order to check on the... state of things.”

When Sarah allows her gaze to meet Clementine's, the girl looks almost sad, behind her stoic expression. It must be because Sarah brought up Everett again—Clementine isn't handling it well, the knowledge that Sarah knew where Clementine was all these years but had never come to see her, to tell her she was alive.

Sarah has no clue what to make of that.

“We need to get back to camp,” Clementine says, more to everyone else than to Sarah. “And we,” Clementine shifts her attention to Sarah. “Need to talk.”

Without another word, Clementine turns around and walks away.

The others follow after her without question, and Sarah doesn't realize that Michelle had Sarah's backpack until she shoves it against her chest.

Sarah clutches the heavy thing, tugging open the zipper to shove her dad's shirt back inside. She manages to get the zipper closed before her hand twitches. 

It's wrong. All wrong. Wrong to have her dad's shirt crumpled up inside of her bag.

Dropping to her knees, Sarah rips the bag back open, pulls the shirt out, and begins folding it into crisp lines in her lap. She folds it neatly, like she still sometimes saw clothes folded in abandoned stores, unused and dusty on the shelves. 

When she tucks the neatly folded shirt back into the bag and shrugs the pack on, she's startled to find that Clementine had paused a little ways ahead, watching her.

Just Clementine. The others are already out of sight.

“Sorry,” Sarah mutters. 

Clementine doesn't say anything, her only response is to match Sarah's stride as she passes, moving towards the camp.

Sarah had noticed it while watching from the tree, but walking beside the girl made it far more apparent—Clementine is limping. Her leg must be hurt. 

“What happened to your leg?” Sarah asks as they walk.

Clementine glances sideways at her, appraising. 

“You're limping,” Sarah points out, “Are you hurt?”

Clementine just smiles and says, “No.” For a moment, Sarah thinks that she's not going to speak again, but then she says, “I've never felt better.”


End file.
